I'll go with The Gathering of the Clouds, because I find it more serious in tone than the rest of the book, anticlimactic since it comes after Smaug's death, and a little slow. It's also disappointing because war is about to break out between the good guys. It's Tolkien's attempt to turn this children's tale into something for adults, and to me it feels tacked on -- and indeed I believe it was tacked on to the tale Tolkien told his children when he readied it for publication, although I'm not certain about that.

Once again, here are the Cliff Note summaries if you want to refresh yourself on which chapter is which. But watch out for Cliff -- I noticed some errors in those summaries.

um, intriguing way of looking at this chapter! From the "strategies", rather than the conflict itself. Very curious, how it seems to resemble another well-known battle...and now I'm going to be wondering where the heck that Thrush went to!